


Gathering Data

by ava_jamison



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Superman (Comics), Superman - All Media Types, Superman/Batman (Comics), World's Finest (Comics)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2019-01-22 12:06:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12481200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ava_jamison/pseuds/ava_jamison
Summary: Superman watches Bruce Wayne act like a dizzy socialite.





	Gathering Data

The first time it happened, Bruce noted it, but decided to mark it as having more to do with Clark: Clark Kent, reporter, and his apparent need to stammer and stutter and generally make himself—in public, anyway, appear less than he was. It was bad enough that he wore those suits, and didn’t even buy them in the right size. A shame it was, really. But he understood playing a part. What he didn’t understand was the… blushing. 

It wasn’t his fault that he’d had to pull the gag. He’d shown up for jury duty, ready to meet his civic obligation. Bruce Wayne was not too good to do so, and he was happy to set an example, even if it meant a day in civil court. But something went awry in the jury pool and he found himself shuffled—along with jurors 101-149, due to lack of turnout—into the criminal court jury pool. Which made voire dire… start to get risky. Riskier, even, when the case was revealed: one in which Batman had been involved. A small case, involving a relatively minor crime, but the end result remained the same. Even though he knew the man to be guilty, it was both unethical and against the law for him to serve as juror. 

He couldn’t admit that he knew the defendant, so when Bruce Wayne was seated as Juror #6, he formulated his plan. His reputation would take a hit, but Wayne Enterprise’s P.R. machine had dealt with far worse, and in the contest between looking foolish and a man’s right to a fair trial, personal vanity lost. 

Thankfully, he and his fellow jurors were released for a lunch break before the real trial began. He’d be easy to replace. While the rest of the rest of the jurors grabbed lunch in the courthouse cafeteria or the deli next door, he crossed the street to McAllister’s Pub. 

One hour, one cryptic phone call to Oracle (“Call me at 1:10. Just do it, please.”) and two scotches later—one surreptitiously discarded in a plastic palm, one partially drunk, partially spilled on his lapel—he strode back to the courthouse, just a slight bit clumsy and very fragrant. 

It was a little harder than he’d guessed for Bruce Wayne to get thrown off a jury—the pass at Juror #5 completely backfired, and it took three minutes of in-court smarmy phone sex with a momentarily baffled Oracle, but finally, success was achieved. He was escorted out by Judge Thorpe’s bailiff, only to find himself in the courthouse hallway, face to face with Clark Kent. 

“Mr… Trent?” Bruce said as the reporter almost stumbled into him, open notebook and pen in hand. 

“Sorry, Mr.—Wayne, is it?” 

Bruce watched Clark’s nostrils flare as he took in the reek of alcohol. Nodded. 

Clark’s eyes narrowed, eyeing the bailiff. “Do you need some… assistance, Mr. Wayne?” 

Bruce put a slur in his voice. “What kind of assistance did you have in mind?” 

Clark cleared his throat. His eyes drifted toward the bailiff, who was calling for backup into his walkie. “I am employed by you, Mr. Wayne. In a manner of speaking. Just finished covering a case. And it looks like perhaps you—” 

A pair of armed cops rounded the corner toward them. 

“I’d hate to take liberties with one of my employees.” 

Clark snapped his notebook closed and took Bruce’s arm. “Looks to me, Mr. Wayne, like perhaps somebody needs to take you home.”

Bruce shifted a little on his feet, feigning imbalance as he leaned into Clark. “Had one of the ladies more in mind, but why not, Mr. Kent.”

Clark coughed, ears pinking. 

Bruce noted.

The cops closed in. Clark stammered an explanation, talked them out of arresting Bruce. Vouched for his character. Put him in a cab. 

The second time it happened, Bruce almost passed it off as something to do with the intensity of the situation. And decided to gather data.

The annual Metropolis Children’s Hospital Charity Ball went wrong—a bomb threat—event attendees trapped in the Fillmore Hotel ballroom. Gunmen around the perimeter fired, ready to pick off fleeing escapees, so Superman took care of the problems outside the building while a distraught and hopelessly ineffectual Bruce Wayne kept everyone inside the hotel through the use of distraction and a strategically-timed panic attack. 

The richest people in three states clustered around him, instructing the hapless Mr. Bruce Wayne on how to breathe rhythmically into a paper bag and/or digging in little evening purses to find him a Xanax until Superman showed up to let everyone know the criminals were in the hands of the police and the bomb had been dismantled.

The crowd dispersed for their wraps and cars, and Bruce—sprawled inelegantly in his tux on the ballroom floor—looked up at the Man of Steel, paper bag still held to his face.

“You alright?”

Bruce lowered the bag. “Now that you’re here, Superman, I think I may be. I don’t know what came over me.”

Clark stared at him, horrified, for a split second. Then extended his hand and Bruce took it, let himself be helped up. 

“My hero.”

Superman… colored a little at that. “My pleasure.”

Just as he stood, a tanned trophy wife named Charlotte Dugan came running over, triumphantly waving a tiny pill, pinched between her thumb and index finger. 

“Thank you, but no, Charlotte,” Bruce said. “Guess I just needed to catch my breath for a minute.” He smiled his most vacuous smile. “That and a little help from Superman, here.”

“So true,” she said, turning to ogle the man in tights.

“Mmm.” Bruce turned to look at Superman too. “Metropolis certainly is lucky to have this big guy looking out for the city. Maybe Gotham can get one of its own, ha ha.” It was his fake Brucie laugh, and he watched… was Clark? Yes. He was actually blushing.

“I have to go and help with the um… paperwork,” Clark said. And was gone.

Bruce filed the data away. 

The third time it happened, Bruce pushed harder. It was a Wayne Foundation event for a joint Gotham/Metropolis charity relief effort. Lucius Fox spoke eloquently about the new organization, Superman gave a short inspirational speech and Bruce smiled for the cameras, almost succeeding in keeping the shrapnel injury that looked like a hickey on his neck out of the pictures as he read a two-line prepared statement that included a joke about his golf game. 

After Lucius’ PowerPoint, he’d stood at the podium alongside Fox and Superman for Q&A. Gossip rags asked two questions about his social life (“Whenever I can, beautiful,” and “You probably shouldn’t believe everything the Newsmith’s say about that weekend…”) then Superman—after explaining that no, he would only be speaking on the subject of the relief effort tonight, he did not have an official point of view on the current political situation in a certain South American country, the war in Afghanistan or the 2012 election—and Lucius spent the rest of the session answering questions relevant to the actual event. 

Afterwards, at the small reception, Bruce had or seemed to have four drinks, spilled a cosmopolitan down Harriet Johnson’s décolletage, and insulted the head of Fenton’s Frozen Foods. 

Meanwhile, he watched Clark out of the corner of his eye, always surrounded by a group of people hungry to hang out with Superman. 

When the crowd finally thinned, as Superman made his goodbyes, Bruce made his move. Armed with two martinis, he sauntered over. 

“So, Superman?”

Superman turned from the man he’d been talking to, the retired elderly head of Gainsworth Industries to look at Bruce. “Mr. Wayne.”

“That’s a little formal, isn’t it?” Bruce took a sip of his martini. Extended the other one to Superman. 

“I-I don’t usually drink.”

And Superman doesn’t usually stutter, either. Bruce let his eyes wander up and down the full length of the man, slowly. “Surely you can make and exception,” he reached Clark’s eyes and winked, “—handsome.’

A nervous twitter went through the half-dozen people surrounding them, and J. Daniel Gainsworth looked back and forth between the two of them for a moment, then hastily excused himself. 

Bruce smile turned into something close to a smirk as he twisted to deposit the drink Superman didn’t want on the tray of a passing waiter. 

Slurring his words a little, he addressed the entourage surrounding the man in red and blue. “Ladies and gentlemen, I am so sorry to have to take this hero off of your hands.” 

He slipped an arm into Clark’s and pulled him toward an empty balcony.

“What are you doing, Bruce?” Clark said, his voice a hissed whisper.

“Wondering what’s got you so… flustered, I think.”

“Nothing has me flustered.” He extracted his arm from Bruce’s.

On the small patio, Bruce took a step closer and Clark stepped back.

“What is it, Mr. Kent?”

“What?” Clark looked out at the darkening sky. “Don't you need to get back to Gotham?”

“You know, if I didn’t know better, Man of Steel, I’d think something about this Bruce Wayne makes you… ” He watched him carefully. Unless he was going up against a super-villain, Clark usually had a tell. “Nervous.” 

“No—”

“Uncomfortable?” Bruce took another step closer, his voice a low insinuation. “Turned on?”

Clark coughed. 

Aha. 

Clark didn’t make eye contact, looking out over the horizon. 

“What is it, Clark?” Bruce kept his voice low and husky. “What about this particular little… acting job makes you all,” he stole a quick look inside, at the partygoers. No one even seemed to know they were out there. Yet. 

“What,” he said, putting a finger on Clark’s chest, “about me pretending to be this,” he rolled his eyes at his charade, “makes you all…” he let his finger slowly trace the ‘S’ to emphasize his words. “Hot. And. Bothered.”

“Bruce!” Clark cleared his voice, stepping away. “I don’t know what you’re—”

“Don’t you?” Maybe it was the last martini, but this really was one of the most interesting things he’d ever discovered. He looked rather pointedly at Superman’s groin. 

“Stop it, Bruce. And look, shouldn’t we go back inside?”

“Is it the perceived helplessness? Am I too domineering,” he leered at him, winking. “When I’m Batman?”

Clark pushed his hand from his chest. “Bruce, stop kidding around.”

“Who says I’m kidding, big guy?” 

Clark ran a hand through his hair. The spit curl popped through his fingers and fell back into place, perfect. Out here in the twilight, Bruce really could almost imagine…

Clark eyeballed the balcony railing. “Look, I’ve got to go.”

“So soon, Superman?”

“Stop doing that!”

“Stop doing what, Kal?”

Clark snorted, raising an eyebrow. “Really, I think there’s an emergen—”

“You think?”

Clark nodded, somewhat distractedly, moving toward the edge of the balcony, preparing to take off. “And Lois wants me to invite you for dinner. Saturday.”

Bruce narrowed his eyes. “Alone?”

“Well, yes. I mean—sorry, did you want to bring somebody?”

“I’ll have to check my calendar, Clark.” 

Superman nodded, once. “Okay, then. Talk to you la—”

“Question is…” Bruce leaned back, elbows on the railing, trying his best debauched man-about-town look and sigh. “Shall I come like this?”

Clark rolled his eyes. “See you Saturday, Bruce.”

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel coming soon.


End file.
